Media pundits, who can neither see nor objectively report what a mess the city of Baltimore is in, are nevertheless in the mind-reading business.
There must be, they opine, “trouble in paradise” between President Trump and his vice president. That’s because Donald Trump won’t offer a five-year-in-advance endorsement for Mike Pence for the 2024 election. It does not matter to them that Vice President Pence hasn’t indicated that he wants the job yet or not.
This latest leap comes from an answer during an interview on “Fox & Friends” last month. The question was this: Would he give an automatic endorsement to Mike Pence in the 2024 presidential election?
President Trump’s response, “Look, I love Mike, we’re running again, but you’re talking about a long time, so you can’t put me in that position. But I certainly would give it very strong consideration. He’s a very, very outstanding person.”
The mainstream pundit corps jumped on Trump’s hesitation as a “big deal.” Said NBC News reporter Jonathan Allen, “It’s a big deal that Trump won’t commit to endorsing Pence in 2024. He’s telling the country that Pence is the next best person to be president as his running mate, but not really?”
Other news headlines ran the gamut from “Trump declines to give Pence his endorsement…” to “Trump won’t commit to backing Pence for president in 2024.” One story on The Hill reports that Pence has not yet indicated he wants the job. A PBS piece added its own assessment with a creative use of the passive voice: “Pence has not explicitly (said he would run in 2024), though it is widely expected.”
“It is widely expected?”
That could be a reporters’ dog whistle for “sharpen your knives, guys. This fellow has heft. Get your fake news stories of misogyny and racism ready.”
On the other hand, using the passive voice is a creative tool that reporters and bureaucrats use in statements like, “Mistakes were made and the reporting was inaccurate.” Note the lack of assignment of responsibility. They teach grammar in journalism school, and when journalists use the passive voice, they do it on purpose. It is the common alternative to “unnamed sources report,” when those sources could be discovered somehow.
Another uncorroborated report was that President Trump and Vice President Pence were no longer meeting one on one. Gasp! This must mean there’s a rift on the horizon! Something’s definitely wrong here! Never mind that there are about a million alternative explanations to a President streamlining his meeting schedule, and that’s not to say the report is even true.
Nevertheless, the foregoing is an example of the reporters’ use of “innuendo.” Some jokester described “innuendo” as the “Italian word for suppository.” The mainstream press uses snarky innuendo for proctologic investigations of Donald Trump and those around him.
Their suppository of choice nowadays is the adjective “racist.” Throw in that adjective, and objective reporting scatters like roaches in any Baltimore housing project.
However, in a rare example of objectivity, one report in USA Today got it right, “…it is not unusual for a president to hold off on speculating about a distant election.”
Actually, there is a history of a sitting president’s not jumping into the politics of endorsing the second in line to take over the job. For example, Ronald Reagan withheld his endorsement of George Bush until Bush sealed the deal with convention delegates.
The original climate alarmist, Al Gore, didn’t want Bill Clinton’s endorsement (no surprise there).
Finally, Barrack Obama still has not endorsed Joe Biden. Biden is reported to have said that he asked his former boss not to endorse him. “Whoever wins this,” said Biden, “should win it on their own merits.” (Which ironically sounded like an endorsement of Donald Trump.)
So, in their undying quest to make the President of the United States look bad, the mainstream media hang on his every word, hoping to trip him up.
The President is fed up with the lying mainstream media. It was obvious during his confrontation with the gaggle of the whiny White House press corps following the Mueller testimony disaster. Following this epic win, one would expect questions like, “Mr. President, do you feel vindicated?” Instead, to the President’s obvious irritation, one reporter asked, “Mr. President, are you concerned about being indicted?”
The President responded to that question by getting in the reporter’s face and pointing out why the question was biased, off point, and stupid.
Those characterizations personify the performance of the mainstream press today. They see and report what they want to see. When the Media doesn’t distort and fabricate, they just make stuff up.
